Chapter 37: 371-381
Contents
Page 371
Amphibia
"plural of amphibian" – Wiktionary
Page 372
un Accés de Cuisinier
"an attack from the chef" -– HyperArts entry: French
Jacques de Vaucanson
"He actually did make a mechanical Duck that could eat and excrete. Perhaps his most significant automata were his automatic looms, because years later, Jacquard would invent the punched card so as to program Vaucanson's looms" -- HyperArts entry: Vaucanson, Jacques de (1709-82)
See also, Bruce Mazlish’s the man-machine and artificial intelligence and Pynchon’s Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?.
Mechanical Duck
"an actual historickal figure; ‘account of the mechanism of an automaton, or image playing on the German-flute: as it was presented in a memoire, to the gentlemen of the Royal academy of sciences at Paris, by Vaucanson, inventor and maker of the said machine. Together with a description of an artificial duck, eating, drinking, macerating the food, and voiding excrements, pluming her wings, picking her feathers, and performing several operations in imitation of a living duck’ (Translated out of the French original, by J.T. Desaguliers. London, Printed by T. Parker, and sold by S. Varillon, 1742)" -- HyperArts entry: Duck, Vaucanson's mechanickal
See also Elaboration & Illustration, Great Chain of Being.
Page 373
Thousand Toises per Minute
Noun: toise, f. = a former French unit of length, corresponding to about 1.949 metres
Etymology: Old French teise (cognate with Italian tesa), from Latin tesa (brachia) ‘outstretched (arms)’, from tendere ‘stretch’.
Pronunciation: /twaz/
- a toise.
- a height gauge.
Retrieved from "Wiktionary"
This translates to approximately 72.66 miles per hour.
Man in the Iron Mask
"The Man in the Iron Mask was a prisoner held in a number of prisons, including the Bastille and the Chateau d'If, during the reign of Louis XIV of France. The identity of this man has been thoroughly discussed, mainly because no one ever saw his face as it was hidden by a mask of black velvet cloth, which later re-tellings of the story have said to have been an iron mask" -- Wikipedia
faison le Défeuner
"do lunch" -- HyperArts entry: French
